The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1887-05-12
QUEER ARTICLES OF DIET.
Some DelicacieS Found in the Chinese
and Japanese Markets.

Walking through the Chinese
market in San Francisco one sees
some very queer articles of food
offered for sale-small pats of soft
cheese, vanished amber brown and
stamped with Chinese characters !;
well-peeled chestnuts, with tiny
slices of white cocoanut wrapped in
neat little coraucopias of glossy cab
bage-leaf; forty kinds of dried nuts,
fruits, (whole or sliced,) roots and
barks.
Then there are living turtles and
frogs; fowls and fish, alive, freshly
dressed and smoked or dried: meats
half cooked in the carcass wreaths
Of dried oysters strung on bamboo
splints: abalones, like black models
for dolls hats -shreds of white cutie
fish, and host of other edible curl
osities.
A stranger might suppose that
they were simply curiosities, like the
ancient sticks Of barber pole candy
exhibited in the dingy windows of a
country grocery; or, like the ham
elaborately decorated with geome-
trical puzzles in jelly, to be admired,
but on no account to be carved. Not
at all. They are regarded as eatable,
and they are eaten.
In fact the Chinese and japanese
eat everything that comes out of the
sea. All the fishes are good to their
taste, and are caught with great skill
Seaweeds of several sort are sent far
into the interior, to be used in thick
ening soups, gravies and puddings,
and are highly priced because they
give a relishing favor of salt, which
is a luxury beyond the reach of most
Chinese peasants.
The use of seaweed is almost iden-
tical with the very common use of
"Irish moss" by Americans in max
ing toothsome dishes. But, indeed,
fishes and seaweed are eaten the world
over, but surely no other people eat
the tidefat animals swallowed by the
natives of Yesso. For example, the
most simply organized of the class of
animals to which .shells" belong are
called ascidians. They grow some
times singly, sometimes in clusters,
and are rooted immovably to the
sandy bottom, subsisting on what
the currents may bring to them.
In Japan there is an ascidian
Cynthia) which is as large as ones
fist. 1t has no shell whatever, and
is a gray, fabby, tulip-shaped sac,
supported on a short stalk. But, in
spite of its forbidding appearance,
the Japs pickle it in vinegar and use
it as food.
Another animal growing between
the high and low water-marks on the
Japanese coast is a mud-worm called
ISABELLA. It occupies hard, limy
tube of its own making, and gets its
food, when the high tide comes up
over its hiding place, by thrusting
out head bushy with tentacles, and
sucking in currents of water loaded
with minute particles Of nutriment.
Out of this wriggling creature the
shore people make soup, which is
true vermicelli, not a paste imitation
of ''little worms" and it is said to
taste as badly as it smells.
A better dish is made from the soft
interior parts Of the sea-urchin, OF
echimus, large numbers Of which
lurk along the rocky shores of the
japanese archipelago and the north
ern coast of China.
I have seen the Haidas and other
coast Indians of the Pacific shores OF
British America devouring raw sea-
urchins with great gusto, crushing
them in their fists, sucking out the
orange-colored cluster Of eggs, which
constitute the only edible part,
amounting to one OF two teaspoon
fuls, and then throwing the thorny
case aside. The minute eggs taste
much like oysters, and have been a
favorite food of the natives Of the
bleak coast of Alaska for ages.
On many of the islands Of the
| Aleu:ian archipelago you may see
spots close by the beach where the
grass is always noticeably greener
and more luxuriant than elsewhere.
When the surface soil is removed at
these spots there is found underneath
a layer of what seems to be greenlsh
sand everything the stony or clayey
soil Of the island.
It is not sand, however, but the
| powdered remnants of sea eggs that
have been thrown underfoot during
unnumbered feasts. These heaps are
often two or three feet in thickness
and cover several acres. They were
probably forming for more than l,0W
years, and throughout the layer may
be found some interesting stone and
bone relics of the race which made
them.-YoaHh's Companion